
Base Layer
Base Layer will be providing insights from founders and investors in the base layer of cryptoassets. Simplifying complex projects and the technology being developed, from interoperability to relayers and more - who is building the future, why are they and how are they doing it.
Latest episodes

Jun 18, 2021 • 25min
Base Layer Episode 213: Gabby Dizon, Co-Founder of Yield Guild Games on building the employment agency of the Metaverse
Gabby joins me for one of the most inspiring conversations I've had on the show to date. In late 2020, Yield Guild Games set out on a mission to introduce as many people as possible to the concept of play-to-earn. Just eight months later, they have witnessed countless life-changing success stories as a result of the money earned by playing NFT games such as Axie Infinity. Come listen to the story and see how digital assets are changing people's lives for the better around the world.

Jun 14, 2021 • 31min
Base Layer Episode 212: 0xMaki from SushiSwap on DEX's moment seen around the world
What a special show with 0xMaki, a world-renown contributor to SushiSwap which is a decentralized exchange built on Ethereum that utilizes an automated market-making system rather than a traditional order-book. Instead of matching individual buy and sell orders, users can pool together two assets that are then traded against, with the price determined based on the ratio between the two. SushiSwap began as a fork of Uniswap; however, is growing into a more diversified, more grassroots alternative.

Jun 7, 2021 • 32min
Base Layer Episode 211: Colin Evran from Protocol. Labs on the role of decentralized storage in Web 3.0
Colin from Protocol Labs joins me to discuss all the work they are doing there in enabling Web 3.0. Protocol Labs is an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory. Their projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and many more. They aim to make human existence orders of magnitude better through technology. About our sponsors: Nexo and ParaswapNexo Try Nexo, the only instant, efficient and complete crypto banking service, featuring: savings accounts with up to 12% interest on crypto, Stablecoins & fiat; flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR; an exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and top prices. All of this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo Wallet. Start banking at nexo.ioParaswapParaswap aggregates decentralized exchanges and other DeFi services in one comprehensive interface to streamline and facilitate users' interactions with Ethereum's decentralized finance. Learn more at paraswap.io

May 21, 2021 • 33min
Base Layer Episode 210: Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink on Hybrid Smart Contracts & DeFi
Sergey joins me on the show again to discuss their new 2.0 whitepaper in which they delve into hybrid smart contracts and how those go beyond smart contracts today. We talk about the technical advancements outlined in the paper and how Chainlink oracle networks abstract complexity away from existing enterprises that want to interact with smart contracts. We also discuss how Chainlink work not only within the Ethereum ecosystem but with others chains and L2's.

May 12, 2021 • 33min
Base Layer Episode 209: Greg Osuri, Founder of Akash Network on Decentralizing Compute
Greg joins us today for a fantastic episode of Base Layer discussing Akash Network. Akash is the world’s first decentralized cloud computing marketplace, leveraging 85% of underutilized cloud capacity in 8.4 million data centers. Akash enables anyone to buy and sell unused compute. Akash DeCloud greatly accelerates scale and price performance for DeFi, decentralized organizations, and high-growth industries like machine learning/AI.About our sponsors:Nexo: Try Next - the only instant, efficient and complete crypto banking service, featuring: Savings accounts with up to 12% interest on crypto, Stablecoins & fiat; flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR; an exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and top prices. All of this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo Wallet. Start banking at nexo.ioParaswap: ParaSwap aggregates decentralized exchanges and other DeFi services in one comprehensive interface to streamline and facilitate users' interactions with Ethereum's decentralized finance. Learn more about Paraswap at: https://paraswap.io

Apr 28, 2021 • 30min
Base Layer Episode 208: Do Kwon, Founder of Terra Money on building one of the biggest new ecosystems in Digital Assets
Do joins me on Base Layer for a epic chat. Terra is a permissionless blockchain network that is based on a suite of fiat-pegged stablecoins collateralized by the network’s native token LUNA. The idea at Terra is that the path to widespread adoption of Digital Assets is largely based on stability and composability of the underlying network, which is what Terra excels at -- providing a fast and secure settlement layer for building financial applications on top of. These applications can range from payments (Chai) to investing (Mirror) and savings (Anchor).

Apr 22, 2021 • 29min
Base Layer Episode 207: Lucas Vogelsang, Founder at Centrifuge on real world assets bridging into Digital Assets
Financial systems rarely connect to one another directly across company boundaries. Business networks are in competition for market share and thus, do not have incentives to share user profiles, build a robust and shareable reputation system within a network, or open their data silos to others. Lucas and his team at Centrifuge believe that the time of incremental optimization of archaic processes has to come to an end. Only by collectively shaping an entirely new system for the global financial supply chain can we foster widespread economic opportunity. This new system can only be established by dismantling the existing financial supply chain infrastructure, stripping it down to its essential components, and reassembling it for the 21st century. Come listen a fascinating episode that discusses bridging these divides.

Apr 14, 2021 • 28min
Base Layer Episode 206: Ganesh Swami, Founder at Covalent on bringing visibility to billions of blockchain data points.
Ganesh from Covalent joins me with a great discussion on Covalent which provides a unified API to bring full transparency and visibility to assets across all blockchain networks. Simply put, they have a single API which allows you to pull detailed, granular blockchain transaction data from multiple blockchains with no code. About our sponsors:CoinbaseCoinbase Prime is one of the leading prime brokerages for digital assets. Coinbase provides the bridge to the crypto world for institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and financial institutions. Through their professional trading platform, deep and diversified liquidity, and Coinbase Custody, Coinbase Prime is built for institutions. Learn more at prime.coinbase.com.Nexo Try Nexo - the only instant, efficient and complete crypto banking service, featuring:
Saving accounts with up to 12% interest in crypto, stablecoins & fiat
Flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR
An exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and top prices
All this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo wallet. Start banking at nexo.io

Apr 8, 2021 • 21min
Base Layer Episode 205: Jesse Johnson from Aavegotchi on NFT's marrying DeFi
Such a fun and interesting episode! Aavegotchis are rare crypto-collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain, backed by the ERC721 standard used in popular blockchain games such as Cryptokitties, Axie Infinity, and Cryptovoxels. We talk about the game play and what's under the hood which includes some very sophisticated DeFi tooling.

Apr 5, 2021 • 26min
Base Layer Episode 204: Whit. Gibbs, Founder of Compass Mining on making Bitcoin mining available to the masses
Compass is a bitcoin-first company on a mission to support the decentralized growth of hashrate and strengthen network security by helping more people, learn, explore and mine bitcoin. They have made it incredibly easy to start Bitcoin mining - something many have wanted to explore. We discuss this, the environmental fud that has been prominent lately and much more.